Monochromatic Challenge with All That Scraps

Every wednesday, All That Scraps has a new challenge for it's fans

(and i must admit, it's been too long since i've played along, shame on me!)

Today's challenge is a Monochromatic challenge and I felt so honored when my friend, Lesa, asked if she could use my video tutorials and if i'd like to play along with the challenge!

Well, DUH! I love the CC Designs images that All Thats Scraps has AND you KNOW that i just love love love to color in monochromatics so I was definitely up to play!

Here is my card for you using a stamp from the Swiss Pixies collection. This particular sweetie is named Gretel and you can get her in both rubber and digi form!

Now coloring in Monochrome or Monotone does not mean that it has to be "black and white".

In fact, you can really have some stunning outcomes by sticking to all one COLOR.

And if you happen to follow my blog, you may have seen my last bought of monochromatic fun-ness using various colors on THIS post)

For this challenge, i decided to stick with that made me fall in love with monochromatics, black and white! I love seeing stamped images in black and white, it makes me think of black and white photos, which i also love!

For this card, i chose the neutral gray family. Now, any of the grey families work great for a

b & w card, but you do want to make sure that all of your grays are from the SAME categories. using a c1 with a w3 just wouldnt look right at all!

For those who might not know copics, or are new to copics, the letter in a grey copic determines the "temperature" of the gray. A C is a cool grey, a W is a warm grey. Those 2 seem pretty self explanatory, but what about the other 2?! Well, the N stands for Neutral (which i've used on my card today and are a very safe grey color family because it's well... NEUTRAL. The last of the 4 is the T category which stands for Toner grey. What the heck is "toner" grey? Well, before my love affair with copic markers... if you had said "toner" to me, i would have thought of 2 things... washing my face, and dying my hair! Yeah i know, beauty on the brain. But hey, it's what i do. In both instances however... it boils down to the same thing. Toner neutralizes. For you face, toner helps to neutralize the pH levels and cleanse the skin. For your hair, particular for someone with light hair whether it's grey or bleached, a toner is added to help neutralize brassy tones, etc. So, toner... is to neutralize.

Well what the heck, isnt the N for neutral?! Haha, yes. If you were to line up the copic greys from coolest to warmest it would go Cool, Neutral, Toner, Warm. Both neutral and toner are in the middle ground, not too cool not too warm. But toner still has more warmth to it than neutral. Does that make any sense? I hope so, because now i've babbled on entirely too long about the hues of grey!

Back to my card!

So i used the neutral grey family. The thing you'll want to remember with any monochromatic coloring is that 2 parts that touch that would be different colors, need be be different in light or dark, as to not look flat. Example, her shirt (which has a base color of n2 needs to be different frm her romper which i colored a basic of n6. If they were both too similar, the colors would all run together and the overall image wouldn't "pop" as much. I apply this rule to each section that touches. Shirt to romber, shirt to skin, hair to skin, etc. I just think it helps the overall look.

Here's the breakdown... Hair N8, N6, N4, little bit of N2

Skin... N1, N0

Shirt... N3, N2

Romper, Boots... N8, N6, N5

I did use a white gel pen to put the white back in her eyes (easier than trying to color around!)

And i also added some white dots to her cheeks. This helps break up the flatter color since typically i'd add more pink there.

So thats my postie for you today! Be sure to check out the All That Scraps Wednesday Challenge for more FANTASTIC samples by the design team and to play along yourself!

If you have any interest in checking out the monochromatic videos i've done, here are some quick links...

Warm Greys 1, Warm Greys 2, Cool Greys

And if you'd like to check out any of my other Monochromatic posts you can click HERE.

Thank you SOOOOO very much to checking into my blog and have a wonderful day!!!!